Contraceptive Pill links to Depression on BBC radio 4 Woman's Hour Today

Contraceptive Pill links to Depression

Today on BBC Radio 4 in the excellent programme Woman's Hour, I heard a discussion about the contraceptive pill and links to depression.

I would like to congratulate the presenter, Emma Barnett for her enlightened attention to what is a serious problem for many women. Sadly so many women do not link their mood swings, depression and failure to cope, with prescribed medication including the Pill. Many women are prescribed antidepressants to help them deal with depression that may not be a problem once they stop taking a particular contraceptive or other medication.

Please refer to my campaign about Dianette ( click Dianette to link to Guardian article) as the doctor on the programme seemed to promote the fact that skin and other problems can improve with certain contraceptives.

He failed to mention that Dianette, the drug promoted for acne is the one that is not actually licensed for contraception (though it has a contraceptive action) due to higher risk of dvt, blood clots. Banned for a while by the EU this comes with warnings. It may be valuable for women considering this drug, to have their blood clotting factor checked before embarking on using Dianette (also known as Diane 35 and many other generic names.). The doctor did mention that loss of libido as a possible adverse drug reaction (ADR).

We will never know how many suicides are linked to prescribed drugs that cause depression - in other words, are not tolerated, with the addition drugs prescribed for the depression, that are also not tolerated.

You can hear the radio 4 programme on BBC iplayer Contraceptive Pill links to Depression

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04cbv9g

Living a lie

Living a lie

More than 30,000 people die In the US from gunshot wounds.
in an effort to reduce gun crimes, legislation to revise existing mental health laws is under consideration  A New York bill requiring mental health practitioners to warn the authorities about potentially dangerous patients was signed into law on Jan. 15 2013.

Anyone who has been involved with people suffering paranoia is aware of the dreadful fear the person suffers. Often fear of being killed or harmed by other people they see as a threat. The person is at risk at this time, may be feeling suicidal, or taking risks due to their inability to see danger of traffic, or jumping from a height.

When the transient paranoid or psychotic episode has passed, fear remains; fear of being seen as a mentally ill person; fear caused by knowing their mind can run out of control; fear their employer will find out what caused an absence from their studies, work or profession.

It does seem wrong that due to the lax way almost anyone can buy a gun in the US, the people being targeted are only those who admit or are discovered to have suffered psychological changes. Those changes may be temporary due to adverse effects of medicines or anaesthetics.

I am not defending anyone’s right to carry a weapon as personally I do not think ordinary citizens should and believe even those who enjoy shooting should be required to keep their weapons in a secure depository.

Easy access to a gun has led to many tragic deaths by suicide when a person suffers a sudden onset to suicidal ideation. Often as a result of akathisia (extreme agitation) as may be caused by adverse reaction to SSRI antidepressants, an acne drug such as Ro-accutane, following anaesthetics and drugs used after surgery, or following a changed dose of an addictive medication.

In the US States that carry this legislation, the mere fact that  everyone’s confidential mental health records may now be shared will deter some people from seeking help...
The repercussions of being ‘found out’ are so terrifying that all the work done for years to remove stigma from mental illness will be washed away.

My own daughter Karen had a psychotic breakdown due to intolerance of sulphasalazine (sulfasalzine) a sulphonamide drug akin to Septrim the antibiotic, we worried about the effect of this episode on her future career.  She left her course at Goldsmith’s college as we felt the English/History degree studies my be too pressured for her during recovery from her traumatic breakdown. The university were given no explanation for her departure. We respected her wish to hide to facts.

There is no easy answer but I know the lengths people will go to to in order to cover up mental health problems encountered. I have health professional colleagues who opted out of a planned system to disclose NHS health records. They objected to shared medical histories as proposed in a central  National Programme for IT database. Now thankfully cancelled after massive inefficient waste of money on the part of the UK government.

Millie's comment following Margaret's story on Dr David Healy's Blog

Margaret's story on Dr David Healy's blog about the tragic death of her son following prescription of SSRI antidepressant, resulted in many comments - mine is below.

http://davidhealy.org/platonic-lies

All the statistics you quote, do not alter our own personal experiences. The facts also speak for themselves. We should take into account the concerns of eminent clinical pharmacologist Dr Andrew Herxheimer that emphasis in research is on benefits and not harms of treatment.

10 years of UK hospital admission statistics, show that the largest increase is due to adverse drug reactions (ADRs) which has risen by 76.8% – analysis done by Imperial College.

Iatrogenic (treatment induced) illness is a public health crisis. Professor Munir Pirmohamed’s well known study of hospital admissions, that excluded psychiatric, paediatric admissions, showed 1 in 16 were due to ADRs.
A study in Liverpool of children who die or suffer ADRs has already found serious problems, not least of which is how unaware the parents are of the possibility of ADRs.

Awareness a drug is linked to suicide will not stop someone who needs it from taking it. However forearmed is forewarned and knowledge may reduce the number of avoidable deaths.

All kinds of medication can cause mental changes. The manufacturers are aware of this. Sadly in the UK, since the General Medical Council guidelines for medical education were changed in 1993 – to exclude Pharmacology and Therapeutics, doctors have qualified without having to prove competence to prescribe. The do not have to know about psychiatric adverse side-effects. Most have never read the data sheets produced by the manufacturers. Everyone should see these, they clearly state the psychological risks that are well known. Professor Simon Maxwell asked medical students if they felt competent to prescribe and most said ‘no’.

The British Industry web site has data sheets which are called SPCs http://www.medicines.org.uk

Today would have been my daughter Karen’s birthday. Her death in an avoidable accident was preceded by.

Psychosis and Stevens Johnson’s skin adverse reactions to a sulphonamide drug (all known adverse side effects but not always clearly indicated on patient information).

Depression following taking a drug for hormonal problem, well known to cause depression.

Akathisia – extreme agitation preceded by a headache following taking just one tablet of fluanxol an antidepressant.

She went to see the doctor but was turned away as she had no appointment. Came home and took some sleeping pills to ‘calm herself down’ …a typical reaction to akathisia is to self harm to let out the painful agitation ‘ like wanting to jump out of my skin’ one person explained.

For the rest of this list of adverse drug reactions Karen suffered, see the web site for APRIL, the charity I founded http://www.april.org.uk

Once I put up the web site – the personal stories started to come in. Shocking details of how people were adversely affected mentally by drugs.

A man wrote to me ‘ I dreamed I was hitting my wife and when I awoke, I was’. another said ‘ I tried to push my wife out of the car – I don’t know why’ . Both men had just started taking the antidepressant Seroxat.

A headmaster fell on to a motorway, he could not remember what happened, he ended up in a wheelchair.

He had been prescribed an antidepressant, Mirtazapine, not for depression but for re occurring sore throat!

The Drug Safety Research Unit did a PEM study – post marketing study – on Mirtazapine, they found serious ‘unlabeled’ adverse reactions reported by patients who were taking the drug. I asked the Director Professor Saad Shakir, why he did not insist the regulator (MHRA) took action to add the agitation, aggression etc to the patient information and he said ” I am an academic scientist and I published the paper, that is all I have to do”.

I found a similar attitude when I spoke to Professor Louis Appleby and asked why in the Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, there is no mention of medicication causing akathisia and suicidal feelings and actions. He told me he woud ” address this”. If there were warnings about the possibility that sudden changes in a person, either becoming high, manic, or very down, could be due to the treatment, lives could be saved.

I have been communicating with Professor Appleby for 10 years, to try to have the well recorded risk of suicidal feelings due to prescribed drugs or withdrawal effects, recorded in the Suicide Prevention Strategy. So far to no avail.

He admits in the letter to Margaret on this blog, that more education is needed, well he is head of mental health, so how about it Professor Appleby? Awareness among health professionals could save lives.

Apart from my daughter, I know of several instances where people feeling suicidal or agitated have been turned away by GPs or from the A & E departments instead of action being taken to care for them in this vulnerable state. One young man, a medical student, Jon Medland, had been to his GP, another, James, son of Clare Milford-Haven who told her tragic story at our last conference, had been to a walk-in clinic and then to A&E where he was graded 4 and told to wait. Tragic consequences could have been avoided.

A & E personel, GPs and medical receptionists should be trained to recognise those at risk of suicide, as being people recently prescribed SSRIs, corticosteroids or following surgery. Addiction to codeine benzoidiazepines and sleeping pills are other areas where improved medical education and availability of withdrawal protocols could prevent suffering and tragic consequences of too sudden withdrawal.

Relieving Emotional Stress with Robert Whitaker, Bob Johnson, Sami Timimi

conference NOT TO MISS -this Saturday in London

“RELIEVING EMOTIONAL DISTRESS – WHAT’S WRONG, WHAT’S NEEDED.”
Keynote speaker Robert Whitaker author of Mad in America
Saturday 26th November 2011

Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 9:30-5pm
further info, and to register, email : conf@jnf.org.uk

Robert Whitaker's most recent book is:
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, Crown, April 13, 2010, ISBN 9780307452412

Soterias House Alaska opens, (non drug psycho-social treatment approach)

I am publishing this email from Jim Gotstein in full as the content is great news!
Jim mentions psychiatrist Loren Mosher who was one of our speakers in the first APRIL conference in 2001. Loren Mosher resigned from the Americal Psychiatric Association as he felt they were controlled by the pharmaceutical industry.

From: Jim Gottstein [mailto:jim.gottstein@psychrights.org] Sent: 24 July 2009 19:14To: millie@april.org.uk

Subject: [PsychRights] Soteria-Alaska Opens With Two Residents

Hello,I wanted to let you know that Soteria-Alaska has opened its doors on a partial basis with two residents, pending receipt of its license, which will allow it to take more. This is a milestone six years in the making.

For those that don't know about Soteria, Soteria-Alaska is a replication of the original Soteria House in San Jose California. The original Soteria-House was the brain-child of Loren Mosher, psychiatrist of beloved memory who tragically passed away in 2004.

There is also no doubt that the original Soteria House's success depended on marvelous Alma Menn, its administrator, and Voyce Hendrix, its House Manager. The original Soteria House proved that outcomes for people diagnosed with schizophrenia could be dramatically improved if a psychosocial approach was used instead with neuroleptics used as a last resort and stopped as soon as possible when they were used.

The Soteria-Alaska website at http://soteria-alaska.com/ has quite a bit of information on this as does the PsychRights web page at http://psychrights.org/Research/...

While I co-founded Soteria-Alaska in 2003, I left the board in October of 2007, and this achievement can be squarely credited to god-send Susan Musante, Soteria-Alaska's Executive Director, and Dr. Aron Wolf, a well-respected long-time Alaska psychiatrist, who early in his career worked at the famous Chestnut Lodge. Susan has assembled a terrific staff of people for Soteria-Alaska, including house manager Bill Miller, and they have also been instrumental in pulling this off.

Soteria-Alaska has been lucky to have been able to consult with marvelous Alma Menn, who is so terrific with conveying how Soteria House actually worked in practice. It is anticipated that Voyce Hendrix will also be available for consultation as things go forward.

Dr. Mosher and Luc Ciompi, who ran Soteria-Berne in Switzerland for many years developed the following Soteria Critical Elements, which guide Soteria-Alaska:

SOTERIA CRITICAL ELEMENTS Luc Ciompi, Loren Mosher

1. FACILITY: a. Small, community based b. Open, voluntary home-like c. sleeping no more than 10 persons including two staff( 1 man & 1 woman) on duty d. preferably 24 - 48 hour shifts to allow prolonged intensive 1:1 contact as needed

2. SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: a. respectful, consistent, clear and predictable with the ability to provide asylum, safety, protection, containment, control of stimulation, support and socialization as determined by individual needs b over time it will come to be experienced as a surrogate family

3. SOCIAL STRUCTURE: a. preservation of personal power to maintain autonomy, diminish the hierarchy, prevent the development of unnecessary dependency and encourage reciprocal relationships b. minimal role differentiation ( between staff and clients) to encourage flexibility of roles, relationships and responses c. daily running of house shared to the extent possible; "usual" activities carried out too maintain attachments to ordinary life - e.g. cooking, cleaning, shopping, art, excursions etc.

4. STAFF: a. may be mental health trained professionals, specifically trained and selected nonprofessionals, former clients, especially those who were treated in the program or a combination of the three types b. on the job training via supervision of work with clients, including family interventions, should be available to all staff as needed

5. RELATIONSHIPS: these are central to the program's work a. facilitated by staff being ideologically uncommitted ( i.e. to approach psychosis with an open mind) b. convey positive expectations of recovery c. validate the psychotic person's subjective experience of psychosis as real by developing an understanding of it by "being with" and "doing with" the clients d. no psychiatric jargon is used in interactions with these clients

6. THERAPY: a. all activities viewed as potentially "therapeutic" but without formal therapy sessions with the exception of work with families of those in residence b. in-house problems dealt with immediately by convening those involved in problem solving sessions

7. MEDICATIONS: a. no or low dose neuroleptic drug use to avoid their acute "dumbing down" effects and their suppression of affective expression, also avoids risk of long term toxicities b. benzodiazapines may be used short term to restore the sleep/wake cycles

8. LENGTH OF STAY: a. sufficient time spent in program for relationships to develop that allow precipitating events to be acknowledged, usually disavowed painful emotions to be experienced and expressed and put into perspective by fitting them into the continuity of a person's life

9. AFTER CARE: a. post discharge relationships encouraged (with staff and peers) to allow easy return ( if necessary) and foster development of peer based problem solving community based social networks b. the availability of these networks is critical to long term outcome as they promote community integration of former clients and the program itself

--from
James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.President/CEOLaw Project for Psychiatric Rights406 G Street, Suite 206Anchorage, Alaska 99501USAPhone: (907) 274-7686)
Fax: (907) 274-9493jim.gottstein[[at]]psychrights.org http://psychrights.org/